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Wiki-whacked

Wiki-whackedBy Timothy NoahPardon me if I seem a little blue. My Wikipedia bio is about to disappearbecause I fail to satisfy the "notability guideline." Wikipedia, as you probably know, is an online multilingual encyclopediawhose entries are written and edited by readers around the world. What youmay not know is that this ongoing experiment in Web-based collaborationmaintains volunteer gatekeepers, and one of them has whisked me (orrather, the entry describing me) under the insulting rubric, "Wikipediaarticles with topics of unclear importance." I share this digital limbowith Anthony Stevens ("internationally respected Jungian analyst,psychiatrist, and author"), "Final Approach" ("romantic comedy animeseries"), Secproof ("well-known security consulting company in Finland"),and about 400 other topics tagged during the past calendar month. There welanguish, awaiting "deletion review," which I will surely flunk. Wikipedia's notability policy resembles US immigration policy before 9/11:stringent rules, spotty enforcement. To be notable, a Wikipedia topic mustbe "the subject of multiple non-trivial published works from sources thatare reliable and independent of the subject and of each other." Although Ihave written or been quoted in such works, I can't say I've ever been thesubject of any. And wouldn't you know, some notability cop cruised past mybio and pulled me over. Unless I get notable in a hurry--win the NobelPeace Prize? Prove I sired Anna Nicole Smith's baby daughter?--a "sysop"(volunteer techie) will wipe my Wikipedia page clean. My career as an encyclopedia entry began on Sept. 6, 2005, when (accordingto Wikipedia's "history" tab) an anonymous user posted a three-sentencebio noting that I write the Chatterbox column in Slate; that previouslyI'd been a Washington-based reporter for the Wall Street Journal; and thatmy wife, "fellow journalist Marjorie Williams," had died the previousJanuary. I've since discovered through some Web sleuthing that my Boswellwas a student at Reed College named Ethan Epstein. Subsequent reader editsadded to Epstein's original a few more professional and personal itemsfrom my resume that, like the earlier details, were readily available online. I can't say that I'd ever harbored an ambition to be listed in Wikipedia,but when I tripped over my bio three months after it appeared, I feltmildly flattered. Exercising my wiki rights, I corrected my city ofresidence, which was off by a few blocks, and added that I'd published aposthumous anthology of Marjorie's writing under the title, "The Woman atthe Washington Zoo." Various items got added to and subtracted from my bio over the next yearand a half, and every now and then I would check for errors (there weresurprisingly few). It was on one such foray that I discovered I'd beendesignated for wiki oblivion, like a dead tree marked with orange spraypaint for the city arborist to uproot. Talk about humiliating! Wikipedia does not, it assures readers, measurenotability "by Wikipedia editors' own subjective judgments." In otherwords, it was nothing personal. But to be told that one has been foundobjectively unworthy hardly softens the blow. "Think of all your friendsand colleagues who've never been listed," a pal consoled. Cold comfort. Ifyou've never been listed in Wikipedia you can always argue that youromission is an oversight. Not me. I've been placed under a microscope and,on the basis of careful and dispassionate analysis, excluded from the mostcomprehensive encyclopedia ever devised. Ouch! But the terms of eviction from Wikipedia raise a larger issue than thebruised ego of one scribbler (or Jungian analyst or anime artist orFinnish security consultant). Why does Wikipedia have a "notability"standard? We know why other encyclopedias need to limit the topics they cover. Ifthey're on paper, they're confined by space. If they're on the Web,they're confined by staff size. But Wikipedia commands what is, for allpractical purposes, infinite space and infinite manpower. The drawback toWikipedia's ongoing collaboration with readers is that entries arevulnerable to error, clumsy writing and sabotage. The advantage is thatWikipedia can draw on the collective interests and knowledge of itshundreds of thousands of daily visitors to cover, well, anything. To limitthat scope based on notions of importance and notability seemsself-defeating. If Wikipedia publishes a bio of my cleaning lady, thatwon't make it any harder to field experts to write and edit Wikipedia'sbio of Albert Einstein. So why not let her in? Granted, there are a few practical limits to covering any and all topics,"important" or not. One is privacy. Assuming that my cleaning lady wereneither a public figure nor part of any larger story, it would bedifficult to justify posting her bio against her will. Another limit isaccuracy. The bio's assertions about my cleaning lady would have to beindependently verifiable from trustworthy sources made available toreaders. Otherwise Wikipedia's vast army of volunteer fact-checkers wouldbe unable to find out whether the bio was truthful. But Wikipedia already maintains rules concerning verifiability andprivacy. Why does it need separate rules governing "notability"?Wikipedia's attempt to define who or what is notable is so rococo that iteven has elaborate notability criteria for porn stars. A former PlayboyPlaymate of the Month is notable; a hot girlfriend to a famous rock staris not. Inside the permanent town meeting that is Wikipedia's governingstructure--a New Yorker article about Wikipedia last year reported that 25percent of Wikipedia is devoted to governance of the site--the notabilitystandard is a topic of constant dispute. When people go to this much trouble to maintain a distinction renderedirrelevant by technological change, the search for an explanation usuallyleads to Thorstein Veblen's 1899 book, "The Theory of the Leisure Class."This extended sociological essay argues that the pursuit of status basedon outmoded social codes takes precedence over, and frequently undermines,the rational pursuit of wealth and, more broadly, common sense.Hierarchical distinctions among people and things remain in force notbecause they retain practical value, but because they have becomepleasurable in themselves. Wikipedia's stubborn enforcement of itsnotability standard suggests that Veblen was right. We limit entry to theclub not because we need to, but because we want to.The Washington Post

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